Her expression changed instantly. Betty looked suddenly older and unlike any one had ever seen her look before.
She took her brother’s hand. “Never mind, Dick, I think I know already,” she whispered, and unexpectedly it seemed to be Dick who was having to be upheld and consoled.
Esther slipped silently away, leaving the brother and sister together in their sorrow, and somehow in her loneliness she felt almost envious of them in the closeness of their grief.
CHAPTER XXII
Saying Farewell to the Cabin
“For my part,” announced Polly O’Neill, “I am not so heart-broken as I expected at having to say farewell to Sunrise cabin. It is so different for us all, with the Princess not here and having to think of her back home in their big house with only her mother and one little maid of all work. To think that I used to tell the Princess I thought she ought to be poor a little while just to find out what it felt like! I could cry my eyes out now when I realize that it has actually come true.”
It was the May meeting of the Sunrise Council Fire and because it was to be the last meeting for some time which might be held on their old camping grounds, the girls and their guardian had decided that it should take place outdoors and that at the close of their regular program there should be, a general talk over the history of the past year.
Esther rose quietly at this speech of Polly’s, partly because she seemed to wish to find relief in action and then because the May night was cold, and put several fresh pine logs on their already glowing fire.
“You must not think I am ungrateful, Rose dear,” Polly continued. “This winter has been to me the most wonderful one, sometimes I think the turning point in my whole life, but if Betty is going to be trying to take boarders in that big Ashton house to support herself and her mother and let Dick finish his medical studies, why I think Mollie and mother and I had better be back in our own tiny cottage to give her our valuable advice.”
“But Betty won’t be keeping boarders herself, will she? I thought it was Mrs. Ashton who was to look after things with Betty to help,” Nan Graham spoke in a kind of awed tone. “Still it wouldn’t seem very nice of us to keep on living here in our cabin, which Betty did a great deal more toward building than the rest of us, if she were not here to share it.”
Mollie shook her head decidedly, so that the feathers of her Indian head-dress made fantastic small shadows on the ground. “I don’t think that would matter in the least and certainly not to Betty,” she said in her sensible, far-seeing fashion. “Betty would love to think of our being here and she would come and visit us whenever it were possible, but circumstances seem to have changed for all of us. Here is mother coming home from Ireland and Polly and I will want to keep house for her and look after things while she is at work just as we have always done, and then Mrs. Meade says she isn’t willing for Eleanor to be away from her any longer, and Nan feels she ought to go home and help her mother with the younger children, and Esther going away after a while to New York to study. Dear me, what changes a few months can bring! I am glad they have not brought such big ones to us, Polly.”